Declining beekeepers may cause low food production

December 24, 2007|By Kumari Kelly Orlando Sentinel

CLERMONT — David Coggshall remembers when he was a boy hauling bee colonies from sweet clover fields in Cocoa to cucumber patches in the Everglades and back to Central Florida in time for summer orange blossoms.

They flavored the honey for his father's beekeeping operation, which has been in the family for three generations.

With more than 1,000 hives, his father's production of the 1960s was more work than one man could do, so he leaned on David when he was old enough to be of use.

The Coggshall operation shut down in the 1970s when Millard Coggshall, who died in 2006 at age 91, no longer had the stamina for it.

The scene has been repeated across the country during the past two decades as hundreds of beekeepers leave the profession, with no one replacing them.

Experts fear that could contribute to a massive drop in U.S. food production in the coming years.

When Coggshall was working hives in the 1950s and '60s, there were about 2,500 registered beekeepers in Florida. Today, fewer than 1,000 remain.

Bert Kelley, a longtime Polk County commercial beekeeper, is one of those still going - but he admits many of his friends have gotten out of the business.

"Generally what happens is most of the beekeeper families don't want to get involved," said Gerald Hayes, chief of the Florida Department of Agriculture's apiary-inspection section.

"It's one of the last hard and dirty jobs," Hayes said.

The dropping price of honey, which costs $1.20 per pound to produce but can be imported from China and other places for 50 cents a pound, has turned beekeeping into a nomadic operation with honeybee colonies constantly on the move to where the agricultural need is.

In Florida, the pollination provided by bees is responsible for about $20 million in additional production in the fruit and vegetable industry, state officials said.

Florida's bees are increasingly being taken out of state before returning here for winter to recuperate from the travels, Hayes said.

Hayes calls it the "great sucking sound of bees leaving Florida."

Hayes warns the lack of bees only forces more U.S. dependence on foreign suppliers for fruits, grains, veggies and nuts to feed Americans.

The problems, Hayes said, are not only fewer beekeepers, but bees stressed by pesticides, fungicides, mites, bacteria, other parasites and artificial diets when enough natural food is not available.